Queen's Brian May fumes over Instagram ban

Brian May: "What a crazy world we live in these days"

Queen guitarist Brian May has let rip at an "incredibly unfriendly" user who got him suspended from Instagram.

The rock superstar said his Instagram account was disabled for copyright violation after he posted a photo taken by a person named Barbara.

He said he normally credited people but "must have forgotten" this time.

But he said she should have just asked him for a credit. "All I can say is that if you feel you were 'violated', I feel pretty violated myself," he wrote.

Posting a grab of the Instagram copyright violation notice, he fumed: "Well this is what I woke up to. How RUDE!

"I'm usually very careful to credit anyone whose photos I post - but in this case, at the end of the day, I must have forgotten.

Brian May with Freddie Mercury in Queen in 1984

"So, rather than write to me and say 'dear Brian - you seem to have forgotten to credit me on this picture', this person... reported me to Instagram and they not only took the picture down but disabled my whole account until I'd dealt with the issue - which took about 45 minutes of my time that I could not afford because the link refused to work on my phone.

"What an incredibly unfriendly act from you, Barbara! You not only took my picture and are evidently exploiting my image, and making money off me without so much as a 'by your leave' - but you actually stop me using a picture of myself! What a crazy world we live in these days."

He finished by threatening to retaliate by having her thrown out "if I ever discover that you are at one of our concerts in future".

May is currently on tour with Queen - fronted by Adam Lambert - in continental Europe before moving on to the UK at the end of this month.

Instagram's terms and conditions say: "If you repeatedly infringe other people's intellectual property rights, we will disable your account when appropriate."

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